Sharing my experiences one stitch at a time.

My first handmade dress!

I realise I have been very neglectful of this blog, but life and university (halfway through now – it’s scary!) have taken up all of my time. Now that exams are over however, my freedom is limitless so I finally have the chance to use my present to myself – a shiny new sewing machine!

Practising with the buttonhole stitch on my new machine

I’ve made things before using my mum’s machine with ample supervision, but this is the first time I’ve gone solo and aside from having to YouTube how to attach bias binding to a neckline, I managed it fairly well!

Isn’t it pretty?

The pattern I used was view C from an out of print Butterick pattern (B5363 to be precise) and even though it claims to be a tunic the proportions work well enough for it to be a dress instead. I cut out a size 14 having followed the measurements on the back of the envelope, but they ended up being far too generous so a lot of taking in was required prior to sewing it all together. I also made my own bias binding and very quickly learnt that if I want to do it again I will be buying one of the little contraptions that does it for you; I spent far too long at the ironing board endlessly folding tiny bits of material! Overall the pattern was very easy to follow except from how to attach the bias binding, but YouTube came up trumps as usual and gave me some good instructions.